Much Birch - A fine place to see a movie

Browsing the Borderlines brochure with a pint at the Pilgrim Hotel

My wife helps to run the local Flicks in the Sticks and I help her to tell people about it. So this blog is partly an honest account of volunteering and partly a platform from which to encourage you to get along and see a movie at one of the many venues that will be hosting the 2015 Borderlines Film Festival!

The Girl With the Pearl Earring

We took our first trip to Borderlines when we had only been living in the county for a matter of weeks; the film was The Girl With the Pearl Earring at The Courtyard in March 2004. I remember it was an added screening to the initial run, as the film itself had been so successful that year. I remember this quite acutely, because The Courtyard had not quite figured out their overall scheduling process and for a large portion of the film we were treated to intermittent beats from the drum workshop next door. But the audience was not overly concerned, it was considered that we had squeezed into a space so that we could have a chance to catch the movie in all its understated glory - on the big screen.

The Festival and venue had made the film available to the community in the form in which the writer and director had created it – for the big screen. Drilling this down to another level, Flicks in the Sticks encourages communities in the region to make the most of our shared spaces; utilising pretty much any space from community hall to church, village hall to public house - to bring the movies to your doorstep. And of course as well as the shared spaces, you need the volunteers to run the individual Flicks in the Sticks.

As I type my good lady wife (Bryony) is out screening The Book Thief to an audience of twelve. Twelve people who will enjoy and dislike, twelve people who will engage and discuss the merits of a storyline, of a performance. What Much Birch Flicks does (in much the same way as all the Arts Alive initiatives) is give people living locally the opportunity to access exciting, moving and entertaining film performances in a local venue.

Since January 2006, Bryony and her fellow volunteer Carole (and many others) have been scheduling, organising and manning the Much Birch Village Hall for Flicks in the Sticks screenings, once a month, from September through May each year. From the two people who turned up for the screening of Coriolanus through the heady days of 100+ audiences for Ladies in Lavender, Calendar Girls and Mamma Mia to the decidedly feisty Saturday afternoons full of children and families who have used the hall for a whole host of other purposes such as christenings, yoga, birthdays, exercise classes, funerals, toddler groups and PTFA quiz nights.

For my part – the helping to let people know part - I have a cycle route of village notice boards that take me all around the South Herefordshire environs (well around a few villages anyway: St Weonards, Garway, Orcop, Wormelow, Much Birch, Much Dewchurch, Little Dewchurch and Kingsthorne). If I’m honest, it will only turn into a cycle route in the next few weeks when the Spring weather starts to hit – hopefully – otherwise it is really a drive by drop off when I get a chance.

Then there is the all-important monthly village magazine. Travel up and down the villages of Herefordshire and Shropshire each month and the village store or the village pub will have a village magazine and the village magazine will have news of the local Flicks in the Sticks screening.  For Much Birch village, the support of The Pilgrim Hotel is much welcomed, with regular Much Birch Flicks pre-screening offers. 

So here comes the encouraging to engage bit - get yourself along to any of the wonderful array of movies on offer around Herefordshire and Shropshire during the Festival. I myself am very much looking forward to The Possibilities Are Endless at The Courtyard on March 4. But if you do decide to come along and take in Before I Go To Sleep at Much Birch Village Hall, the good people at The Pilgrim (less than a half mile down the A49) have an early evening offer for you. From 5pm-7pm on the evening of Thursday 12 March – as a Much Birch Flicks / Borderlines attendee you can get yourself a pre-movie delight with a choice of a main course from the bar menu and a drink - for just £8.95

And of course the Flicks in the Sticks venues go on screening throughout the year, not just during the Festival. What the Festival does though, in particular with all of its accompanying promotion, is make a wider audience aware of all the cinematic opportunities that are open to the region. So during Borderlines, we will have regular Much Birch Flicks patrons who might come half a dozen times a year down to parents who might usually only take in a Saturday afternoon screening with the children, but what Borderlines brings each year, is the newcomers. What Borderlines does ultimately is open up more opportunities to discover cinema, to discover that all year round – From Wem Town Hall to St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye there are movies rolling on a big screen pretty much every day of the week, all year round, right on your doorstep.

 Michael Connelly

@MuchBirchFlicks

The Ultra-Viewers: "I don’t have expectations. I want to see something different."

It's well-known at Borderlines that there are festival-goers of prodigious appetite who reputedly and repeatedly watch over twenty films in the course of seventeen days. Many of them know each other and some of them like jazz too. I thought it might be instructive to seek them out. Blaise White lives very close to one of the smaller Flicks in the Sticks venues, Cawley Hall, Eye, near Leominster. He works for Concern Universal in Hereford.

O'Horten

Jo Comino: How many films, more or less, do you see in the course of one festival?

Blaise White: I would think up to twenty. I don’t think I saw so many this year but it wasn’t though lack of wanting to. So, yeah, I’d say up to a couple of dozen if the timings work out.

How do you plan for what you go and see?

We get the brochure and Maggie and I tend to go through our own brochure and we mark the ones we want to see.

Oh, so you each have your own copy?

Oh, yeah, yeah, we each have a personalised copy, we try and plan around are we going to go and see anything together. And if I can, I go on a weekend, on a Saturday say, and see four back-to-back at The Courtyard if they’re of interest. And then we’ve been down to Ross, that’s probably the furthest, or Ledbury, if there’s a particular film we want to see that’s not on anywhere else. We try and fit in as many around everything else that’s happening. And I always plan to take some leave but it never seems quite to work out. I’m probably going to work part-time next year so I should be able to see a few more. I like the idea of being able to go and see films at eleven o’clock in the morning, quite fun.

I go to the London Film Festival and watch films one after the other and sometimes you get two that are thrown together…

…so you get interesting contrasts. I remember going to see the one about the Mongolian horseman (The Eagle Hunter’s Son) on the plains, and then another one about some completely different location and you feel like you’ve travelled a huge distance in one day, being immersed in all these different environments.

The Eagle Hunter's Son

So what tends to appeal to you?

I have a slightly frivolous approach to everything: I’ll go for the less popular thing in the hope that it’s interesting. The mainstream films are always bland or tend that way because they’re appealing to a mass market so I like documentaries. You know the one about the nuclear store in Finland (Into Eternity)? It was a very interesting film but also a very interesting subject. I was really glad that I found out more about what’s actually going on. You think about the whole context. I’ve been involved with anti-nuclear campaigning, not lately, but since I was a student and the whole objection to nuclear power is that you can’t get rid of the waste and actually being reminded that somewhere in the remote wastes, deep underground there’s this kind of thing.

Into Eternity

Deadpan Scandinavian government officials are talking in a very matter-of-fact way, ‘Do we or don’t we put a warning sign outside? Because if we put a warning sign outside that might encourage people to be more curious whereas if we don’t put a warning sign outside, people might stumble on it by accident’. Then at the end they said something about how this was a huge project that amounted to a tiny fraction of waste in the world that needs to be stored or dealt with in some way. So that really crystallised the problem. I like it because it’s Finnish, it’s a different slant on that topic.

The other one was the Norwegian one about the train driver (O’Horten). I loved that because we’ve been on that train but it was just so wacky in an understated way! That really appealed to me. Things that are almost whimsical and not obvious and then having a foreign language film or a film with a foreign setting or foreign actors is interesting The Iranian one, A Separation, I really did want to see that because I’ve heard things about Iranian cinema but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Iranian film before. You have a particular sense of Iran from the news, that there’s a theocracy and discontent, ordinary people not being happy living under this very oppressive system and you got much more of a real sense of what life is like; you wouldn’t otherwise know what the challenges are. Seeing a drama played out in a totally foreign environment, that’s interesting.

A Separation

 Is there anything you’ve seen that’s confounded your expectations, in either a good or a bad way?

That’s a good question because that’s the point: I don’t have expectations. I want to see something different.

So you let yourself go on a tide… bring it on!

Yes, bring it on! The Tibetan film about the dog (Old Dog) you could say in a way that’s such a dull film, nothing happens, it’s all very slow, but it’s fascinating. It’s not something I’d go to see everyday but I think, right, I’m going to book out some time because I want to take a chance and go and see something that will be different and it did have a powerful impact but in a very slow way.

Yes, it was very methodical, this happens and then this happens…

Old Dog

Sometimes I get a bit frustrated because, with a film like that, I don’t really understand the characters, what they’re feeling or what their motivations are. Ultimately when you knew the old man was being stubborn there’s a kind of shock suddenly when you realise he’s strangling the dog. You go out really satisfied because you’ve got to think about this, what’s really happening, summing up this moral dilemma because he doesn’t want the dog to be traded. You could argue that he’s right or wrong. It’s kind of meaty and thought-provoking, I suppose.

There were a lot of people who were totally alienated by the dog-killing. 

It was shocking but I could understand why, I could understand the intention of the film. I thought it was an intelligent way of constructing the film, the plot or the story had real power but in getting upset about it, they missed the point.

I’m trying to think if there’s anything where I’ve thought, ‘No, I don’t get the point of that at all...’

‘…that was a waste of time!’

To be honest, I went to see Bicycle Thieves and it’s bigged up as THE film, and it didn’t have the immediate impact that I expected it to. I didn’t think ‘I can see why people rave about this film or why it’s so influential.’ I didn’t kind of get it.

Bicycle Thieves

It could be because it was of its time?

Revolutionary or whatever.

Have you been coming to the festival right from the start or did you catch on to it?

I don’t know, when did it start? Was it the nineties?

No, 2003.

I think we would have been coming right from the start in that case. For me it’s a real thing to look forward to after the wintertime. You think, this is a time of year I really look forward to because I know I’m going to have an interesting experience.

You go sometimes with Maggie when your interests coincide. Do you prefer going with somebody else or on your own?

I’m quite easy. I’m happy going on my own and going with other people, you can compare notes afterwards and talk about the films you’ve seen. And they’ll say, ‘Did you see so-and-so?’ They might recommend something you hadn’t thought about and you’ll still have a chance to see it. I think she (Maggie) said to me once, ‘You go and see all these films at the film festival but then you hardly go to anything during the year.’

Do you really not go to see much else during the year?

Not a whole lot, no. We go to the Hall here or Yarpole, we’ve been to Bodenham, Stoke Prior, Leominster Playhouse, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Odeon in Hereford. I rarely go to The Courtyard where I know there are quite a few films on and it’s partly because they tend to be more mainstream films, the latest thing, and if it’s a good film I know it’ll be on at Flicks later. Like James Bond, we did see Skyfall eventually, but it was quite a few months after it had done the rounds. I’m not a film enthusiast in the sense that I’ll make time to see films. The thing that I like is being able to see lots of films together also the fact that you get a huge range of different things, the oddball films or the foreign films that you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to see. And how many times do you ever get the chance to see a documentary?

Yes, that’s very true. On cinema release. I suppose in places like London documentary releases are becoming much more frequent but certainly round here…

Benda Bilili

We’ve been from work as well, because we’re dealing with international development and occasionally there are films like Benda Bilili, which was great. I thought I’m sure this is going to be a really fascinating film and it was and, there again, it was a documentary. And so I emailed round at work and said, ‘There’s this film, OK, we don’t work in the DRC but it’s about poor African communities and personal story and it’s got music.’ And I actually got people there, colleagues of mine who wouldn’t ever go to anything in the festival and I was really pleased that they came as a social event and got a lot out of it. I manage the finance team in the Hereford office and some of them are just accountants, they never travel to our programmes, a couple of them have got young children, so they don’t have first-hand experience of what it’s like working in Africa so I thought it’s a great opportunity for them to see that and it’s a great film, a great story.

I think we’ve got some African films in the forthcoming festival. One called Nairobi Half-Life. 

Did you watch films from an early age?

Yeah, I remember queuing round the block to see Walt Disney’s Fantasia. I grew up in Salisbury and the Odeon Cinema there is in this old Tudor house so I have this very atmospheric recollection that you go through this kind of timbered hall to get into the actual cinema and I vividly remember it was there for one night only.

Salisbury Odeon (from mawgrim.co.uk)

I’m just remembering now that there was a Salisbury Film Society and we were studying Macbeth. Polanski’s Macbeth was on at the Film Club so we went as a school thing to see it – I was about sixteen – and I remember that having a big impact. And then for some reason we went to Don’t Look Now at the film society when it first came out, early seventies, and I think that was the first X-rated film I had seen and that put me off. It was quite scary and atmospheric. So a few of us got into going to the film society films, arty ones as well. And, oh yes, there was a film called La Grand Bouffe about people eating themselves to death. The Tin Drum, The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, and a French film and there’s no dialogue in it and a guy who’s a painter, a dull industrial job, and he flips and turns into a caveman and his apartment into a cave and starts ululating and beating his chest.

Now I have some dim recollection of that. Was it with Michel Piccoli? (Themroc). 

Yes, there was this scene where they were having this demarcation dispute with two teams of painters are painting two sides of a set of railings and they get into a fight. So I suppose that’s where I got my taste for slightly offbeat foreign films when I was a teenager. Then as a university student seeing some films like that which I enjoyed.

Is there anything or any type of thing that you’d particularly like to see at the festival? We’ve shown quite a lot of classic films.

Casablanca at Shobdon Airfield

We went to see Casablanca in the hangar. That was a great idea, it made it an event. It’s one of those films you can watch anywhere and I love those 40s, Humphrey Bogart, film noir, Double Indemnity, type of films. Something Altman did, The Long Goodbye, in the seventies. I really like the breakfast films so that you can see four films in a day. I like classic films, foreign films, documentaries, art-house film, lesser-known films, low budget films, some animations.

I always think when the brochure comes out, 'Ooh, what’s going to be in there?' And I think last time I was disappointed; I was hoping there’d be some African films and there weren’t.

There was War Witch. Did you see that?

No I didn’t get to see that. There would probably be quite a few in the programme that I’d like to see but can’t get to. I suppose I’d encourage people at work to go and see the African films, make a social thing of it as well. I just enjoy the fact that I know there’s going to be a huge range of things to see, rather than particular things. Presumably you would always have a huge range of international films?

Oh yeah, I think that is something that is definitely part of the festival’s character.

I’m struggling to think, haven’t there been more defined strands or themes in previous years?

Yes, and we’re bringing that back.

If it’s a particular country or a particular subject, that’s quite nice. You think, well, I’ll go and see those three films because they all deal with related subjects.

Music films are another thing. One DVD I know is in there (cupboard) is Stop Making Sense, the Jonathan Demme concert film with Talking Heads. Absolutely brilliant as a concert film, I’ve never seen anything better. And you had one about Glenn Gould.

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

I’ve just got more into listening to Glen Gould playing Bach piano music. It wasn’t a great film or anything, just a mundane documentary but I think he’s a really interesting character and it was fascinating to find out more about him, why he gave up playing and the strange relationship he had with his concert promoter’s wife. I knew he had issues about his mental health but that was very fortunate for me because I had a particular interest in him so I remember going to the afternoon show and there were about 12 people. And I thought, ‘Sod everybody else, it’s great that Borderlines puts these things on’.

I think it’s very important that it does.

Sometimes I like sitting in a cinema with just twelve people more than in a huge crowd of people. But then there’ve been some like The Lives of Others, a cinema full of people, and you feel the impact the film has on everybody coming out. I really remember that one very clearly because it had such an impact. That was a situation where you want to feel that everyone feels emotionally punched in the stomach by this piece of drama.

The Lives of Others

I love it because I’ve had all sorts of different experiences, from something fairly obscure to something big and amazing, from comedy to drama, and then factual interest. Just going and spending a day in the Courtyard, some days, a Saturday, I’ve been there and watched two or three films and hardly seen anyone I know and still you get the atmosphere of people coming and going, but generally I’ll bump into people and say, ‘Ooh what have you seen? What are you going to see?’

The scrapping of the UK Film Council

Last Monday's shock announcement by the DCMS that it plans to axe the UK Film Council has taken everyone, the film industry as well as the public, by surprise. No-one saw this coming.

It's hard to know what to make of it. For one thing, the outcome is not explicit. Switching over to the Parliament TV website (at 15:15) to catch questions on Jeremy Hunt's statement, there was nothing for three-quarters of an hour, then a request from Ian Paisley Jr for the minister to outline "what direct support and ambition this government has for filmmaking in Britain."

Hunt's reply came across as both non-committal and eminently reasonable: "We haven't announced the decision, we have announced that we are considering doing this because we want to hear everyone's views. What I will say is that the UK Film Council spends £3 million pounds per annum on administration, we want to ask whether that money could be better used to support filmmakers."

Nevertheless the universal reaction to the news has been that the scrapping of the UK Film Council is a matter of fact.

The questions that spring immediately to mind are invariably selfish. What does it mean for my organisation? What does it mean for me as an individual, working within the film sector and as a consumer of film and media? What will happen to current activities, to core funding and to projects already in the pipeline?

Festival Director, David Gillam speaking on Tuesday on BBC H&W (1 hour in) implied that it could be painful to contemplate how the scenario might impact on the film festival three, two, even one year hence.

Certainly almost everything Borderlines Film Festival currently does has a UK Film Council logo sitting on the bottom of it. What will happen to the Regional Screen Agencies through which some of the UK Film Council funds and decision-making filter through to organisations like Borderlines and Flicks in the Sticks? Here is the Screen England statement on the Screen West Midlands website.

It seems to me that whatever the Film Council's bureaucratic shortcomings, the real danger is the scrapping of an infrastructure not only for film production but, even more significantly, for film distribution and exhibition in this country, for training and innovation. It all tallies with the notion of David Cameron's Big Society which is another way of saying that everything sinks or swims commercially. If you're bothered, throw it a life raft (charitable giving and philanthropy is nicely embedded in The Big Society Cabinet Office statement).

Satirist Alastair Beaton defined the coalition government's use of the word "empowerment" to devalue such things -  education, hospitals, as well as cultural activity - very succinctly on the Today programme this morning, "We in government are going to stop doing what we used to do and if you don't do it as a volunteer  we'll close it down."

Here is a selection from the many, many articles that have appeared on the topic of the UK Film Council this past week.

From The Guardian with mixed reactions from figures in the industry.

Demise of the Film Council from the Putney Debater (Michael Chanan).

Dave Calhoun's argument for supporting the BFI and the notion of film as art (rather than commerce) in Time Out 

The UKFC Closing from the Sheffield Doc Fest blog.

Save the UK Film Council petition currently at 20,000+ signatures.

And here's Starsuckers director Chris Atkins's bracingly cynical take on the Council

N.B. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Borderlines Film Festival.

Chris Atkins' Starsuckers Event

Just got back from a very successful evening at the Courtyard where Chris Atkins, the director of Starsuckers, was in attendance for a showing of his film. A lively Q&A followed with Chris highlighting the many hurdles he faced bringing this brave film to the screen. The movie will premiere on UK TV in the near future, following it's showing at the London Film Festival last year. This, in itself, is somewhat of a triumph as distributors were less than keen for the film to find an audience - being complicit in the celebrity 'merry-go-round' as they are. Unsurprising, as the more obvious 'targets' are joined in the finale by the organizers of 2005's Live 8 concert, who are exposed as naive at best. Not a populist view, to be sure. This is a film that should be seen as an education for media-hungry youngsters and Chris Atkins is keen to promote media studies in general as cautionary rather than celebratory. He is working tirelessly to promote the piece around the country and tonight's showcase at Borderlines was received enthusiastically. Be sure to catch it on TV if you weren't there tonight. You won't regret it. Unmissable!

Festival Feedback courtesy of Wordle

Using the slowest of summer months to embrace all that new technology has to offer, here is the audience feedback 'cloud' that I generated using Wordle and good fun it was too. Just fed in the text from our audience questionnaires, most frequently occurring words come out BIG and so on down. So if you click on the thumbnail to access a larger image and scrutinise carefully you'll find the more critical bits...

image by http://www.wordle.net/

Apologies in advance if the larger image doesn't display for you. It will be because your browser is not set to cope with the Java applet that generates the image. My own computer was too old to handle it so had to borrow another!

Official favourites

According to box office figures, the film that drew the largest attendances at Borderlines 2009 was The Age of Stupid, seen by a staggering total of 1,186 people at five different festival locations.

Sell-out screenings for The Reader made it the second most popular film overall. If you missed it, catch The Courtyard's second run from late May. There's another chance to catch Milk too. Other films that drew big crowds were Revolutionary Road, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, A Bunch of Amateurs, North Face and, among the world cinema screenings, Lemon Tree and El Nido Vacío.

However, in terms of largest average audience, the most popular screening was not a commercial film at all. It was Food & Farming in South Herefordshire, Catcher Media's engaging collaboration with primary schoolchildren and local farmers. Further showings will take place on Thursday 7 May at Garway Village Hall (call 01600 750461) and on Friday 15 May at Much Birch Community Hall (call 01981 541274).

Gone but not forgotten

The seventh Borderlines Film Festival is well and truly over but in case you're wondering, like the subject line of a plaintive e-mail from one of our Board Members, 'What do I do now?' we can bring you some small comfort.

The good news is that there's not quite so long to wait till Borderlines comes round again. The Courtyard dates for the next film festival are Monday 1 March through to Sunday 14 March 2010, several weeks earlier than normal.

Summing up, Festival Producer Naomi Vera-Sanso said ticket sales had risen despite the economic down turn. "This year's Festival has been a great success and we are delighted that Borderlines is managing to reach new audiences each year."

Huge thanks to our funders, our local sponsors and our partner venues without which the festival would simply not happen. And, above all, to you, our audiences, who give the event its buzz. We're still processing the questionnaires many of you filled in but are always happy to receive your feedback and suggestions.

Your favourite film?

We're into the final weekend of Borderlines 2009. The box office figures tell us one thing - The Reader sold the most tickets to date - and fairly predictable it is too. But did you have a clear favourite? A film that stood out for you above all others. That gave you the most pain or pleasure. Or simply entertained you and whiled away a few hours...

We'd love to hear about it. You can let us know by leaving a comment. If you don't already have a Google or a Blogger account you'll be prompted to register using your e-mail address (not displayed), a user name of your choice and a password.

What alchoholics refer to as 'A moment of clarity'

Hi everyone. It's Kaz again.

As promised, here is the Hereford College of Art YouTube page. Have fun and please comment on the videos. My page is posted beneath.

http://www.youtube.com/user/herefordartcollege

http://www.youtube.com/user/accionmutante2

Before I go on, I would like to share with you a realisation I had upon sitting down in the Studio theater of The Courtyard today. And that realisation, silly as it may seem, was that Borderlines Film Festival is, and always will be, an independent film festival...

Maybe this isn't the most difficult of things to realise, but I really had not thought of it that way. I always just thought of it as a small festival, that only ever showed 2 or 3 films I'd heard of. I only ever go to one of its venues, and the tag line for the festival is 'The UK's largest rural film festival,' which hardly conjures images of grandeur. But the festival is shown over 28 cinemas. I'd never even thought of that before.

When I turned up to see The Wrestler yesterday, I was not surprised to see that the theater was half empty. I mean, we're in Hereford. When I went to see The Dark Knight there were only 15 people in the cinema and that was one of the biggest films of 2008. But today it struck me. I walked in to the theater expecting an even quieter experience as I watched the charming and witty film Lemon Tree. Unsurprisingly when I walked in, I was confronted with no mere than a handful of patrons, sat quietly waiting for the film to start. I was shocked enough when a couple seated themselves next to me, but safe in the knowledge I would be able to move to a more open space in the auditorium (I like to use both arm rests), I sat patiently waiting for the lights to go down so that I could embrace another seat without fear of being asked to move. No luck. Within 3 minutes the theater was full. Not one seat was left unoccupied and shear human warmth began to almost illuminate the room. It was at this exact moment I had my moment of clarity. This was an independent film, and this is what people wanted to see. And it made me proud to be there. People had filled a room, not because of a shiny poster, or a big Hollywood actor, or even a 1080i trailer on iTunes (standard definition only I'm sad to say). But they had come here to see a Palestinian independent film because it's not the usual Hollywood throw away that you can see anywhere. The had come to see it because without the Borderlines Film Festival, they would probably never have had the chance. And being an independent film maker myself, I'm proud to know that there is such a festival in my local area, and I'm proud to have had the chance to show my work there.

Aaaaanyway. I feel like I've been talking for far to long. And I haven't even talked about the film I went to see. Which was brilliant by the way. And very, very funny. It's not the most wide spread entertainment in the world but I happen to be a fan of what little Palestinian cinema I have seen and I am also an advocate of Palestinian stand up comedy. So to me it made a perfect coupling. And the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it as well.

The director of the film, Eran Riklis, said, when asked if the film was political, that he 'didn't believe in the term and found it out dated.' and I am inclined to disagree. Yes, everything has a political opinion inside it somewhere but some more than others. I think what he has done with Lemon Tree, and what Borderlines has done by bringing it to Hereford has done more to raise an interest in the Palestine/Israel conflict than most news reports will, because it gives the audience people with stories, not just politics and death tolls, and that is what makes people care.

Kaz

p.s From the other side of the fence, as it were, (you'll get the joke if you've seen the film, or if you like pseudo-satirical puns about political relations in the middle east) this is an interesting film from student film makers in Israel, called Smile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMpvTuBPWt4

Thanks again for reading, and keep watching films at the festival.